Recap of a Jam-Packed Tegra Powered CES Day 1

Tablets, telematics and gaming dominate the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show! The highlighted hardware of the show so far seems to be the brand new Tegra 4 processor from NVIDIA. The processor was on display in a series of touch displays ranging in size from 5 to 50 inches, and was shown at the heart of the new wave of gaming platforms and digital dash displays. Could the days of a Tegra-based ready built automotive platform finally be here?

Other quick hits and misses from Day 1.

Hits:
-Parrot Corp has again invaded CES with a variety of embedded automotive systems. Last year I highlighted the Double-Din Android powered Asteroid system, which has seemingly been replaced by a host of new Asteroid line products. More information soon!

-US Globalstat, makers of the popular BU-353 USB GPS module, have released a series of automotive automatation devices aimed at bringing OEM vehicle accessibility to the aftermarket.

-Electrobit had a live demo of their EB Street Director, a QNX based telematics navigation platform. This new package, built specifically for the "Connected Car", allows real-time information updating from online content into the navigation system.

-Vehicle Telematics and Digital Health seem to be growing components of what CES is about. Various vendors have released new lines of Telematic devices, ranging from Belkin to Verizon. Seems telematic systems will soon be mainstream.

WinCE - it's all about the Benjamins. I did a project for Ford last month that was based on WinCE 6.0. With lower licensing costs, "just enough" performance, and a well establish development ecosystem, WinCE remains a viable platform for a lot of industries. And I complain about how old WinXP is!

WinCE is still used in 90% of Chinese head units as well. It is hard to believe that it has been around this long. Luckily things are slowly moving to Android.

Did you get a chance to see the Tesla set up at the show? It had a 17" friggin touchscreen in the center console. I got to play around with it a bit, and got a nice demo from one of their guys. I have a rough video I took while he was talking if anyone is interested in seeing it.